“Our theses, worked out by the Central Committee of
the Party,” Comrade Lenin began, “were sent to the
Italians, and many of them, unfortunately not all, were
incorporated in the Lugano
resolution.”[2]

The opponent very much liked the first part of
Plekhanov’s report, dealing with the betrayal of the German
Social-Democrats,[3] but the same could not be said about
the second part, in which Plekhanov tried to justify
completely the stand of the French socialists.

How was it possible to defend French socialism, which
had called on the Italians to enter the war? It was difficult
to find any passages to justify this appeal even in the
extremely elastic resolutions of the International.

The present war had shown the enormous wave of
opportunism that had risen out of the depths of European
socialism. The European opportunists, in order to
rehabilitate themselves, had tried to fall back on the old and
hackneyed argument about “keeping the organisation intact”.
The orthodox Germans had gone back on their stand to
preserve the formal unity of the party. He, Comrade Lenin,
had always pointed out the opportunism lurking in such an
approach, he had always fought against conciliatory
attitudes which sacrifice principles. All the resolutions of
Vandervelde and Kautsky suffered from this opportunist
tendency of smoothing over obvious contradictions. Kautsky,
in his article “About the
War”,[4] had even talked
himself into justifying everybody, asserting that all were right
from their point of view, since subjectively they considered
themselves to be in danger and subjectively considered their
right to exist to have been violated. Of course, from the
standpoint of the psychology of the moment and
humanitarian considerations, such a mood was more
comprehensible among the French and could therefore be viewed with
greater sympathy; still socialism could not argue from
fear of attack alone, and it had to be frankly said that
there was more chauvinism than socialism in the behaviour
of the French.

Plekhanov, Lenin said further, criticised those comrades
who asserted that it was impossible to find out who
attacked first. In the opponent’s opinion, the present war
was not at all accidental, and had not depended on this
or that attack, but had been prepared by all the conditions
of development of bourgeois society. It had been predicted
long ago, and precisely in such a combination and precisely
along such lines. The Basle Congress spoke about it quite
clearly, and even foresaw that Serbia would be the pretext
for a conflict.

Comrade Lenin then analysed the duty of socialists in
wartime. Social-Democrats did their duty only when they
fought chauvinist passions at home. And the Serbian
Social-Democrats[5] offered the best example of such fulfilment
of duty.

Not forgetting the words of Marx that “the
workingmen have no country”, the proletariat should take part,
not in defending the old framework of the bourgeois states,
but in creating a new framework for socialist republics.
And the great mass of the proletariat would realise this
through its sure instinct. What was going on in Europe
was nothing but speculation on the worst—and the most
deep-rooted—of prejudices. “Our task,” said Lenin, “is
not to swim with the tide, but to transform the national,
the pseudo-national war into a resolute encounter of the
proletariat with the ruling classes.”

Lenin then went on to criticise the entry of socialists
into governments, and pointed out the responsibility
falling on socialists who back their government’s every
step.

“It is better to go to a neutral country and from there
to tell the truth, it is better to make a free and independent
appeal to the proletariat, than to become a Minister”—
with those words the opponent ended his short speech.

Notes

[1]Plekhanov’s lecture, “On the Attitude of the Socialists to the War”,
given in Lausanne on October 11, 1914, was organised by the local
Menshevik group for the promotion of the R.S.D.L.P.

In the debate that followed, Lenin was the only speaker (no
one else took the floor). Reports on Plekhanov’s lecture, Lenin’s
speech and Plekhanov’s summing-up speech appeared in the Paris
Menshevik newspaper Golos (Voice) Nos. 31, 32 and 33 on
October 18, 20 and 21, 1914, under the title of “Russian
Social-Democratic Leaders on the War”.

The speeches were taken down by a Golos correspondent (
initials: I. K.).

[2]Italo-Swiss Socialist Conference, in whose preparation Lenin took
part, was held at Lugano on September 27, 1914. Lenin’s theses
on the war were discussed at the conference and were partially
included in the resolution. The conference was attended by R.
Grimm, Paul Pflüger and others from Switzerland, and
Serrati, Lazzari, Morgari, Turati, Modigliani and others from Italy.
The resolution of the conference characterised the war as
imperialist and called on the proletariat to wage an international
struggle for peace. While the decisions of the conference were not
consistently internationalist or thoroughly revolutionary, they
were, nevertheless, a step forward in the preparation for restoring
international proletarian ties.

[3]On August 4, 1914, the Social-Democratic Group in the Reichstag
joined the bourgeois deputies in voting a 5,000 million war loan
to the Kaiser Government, thereby endorsing Wilhelm II’s
imperialist policy. It later turned out that the Left-wing
Social-Democrats opposed the granting of war credits during the
discussion of the question before the Reichstag sitting, but
subsequently voted for them in conformity with a majority
decision of the opportunist Social-Democrats.

[5]The Serbian Social-Democrats, who were the first to have to take
a stand on the war, did not waver in adopting an internationalist
attitude: in parliament, their deputies voted against war credits.
Their newspaper, Rabochaya Gazeta (Workers’ Newspaper),
published in Ni&shat;, also conducted a campaign against the chauvinists.